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Well, I finally got it downloaded and it actually runs really well. They've clearly optimised the hell out of it since the beta. I'm running it at potato resolution, as usual, but it's chugging along at 50 to 72 fps in Skalitz

Well, I finally got it downloaded and it actually runs really well. They've clearly optimised the hell out of it since the beta. I'm running it at potato resolution, as usual, but it's chugging along at 50 to 72 fps in Skalitz

A note: apparently, turning up the render distance IMPROVES performance

Well, I finally got it downloaded and it actually runs really well. They've clearly optimised the hell out of it since the beta. I'm running it at potato resolution, as usual, but it's chugging along at 50 to 72 fps in Skalitz

A note: apparently, turning up the render distance IMPROVES performance

The graphics, performance and the narrative are not only good but better than what I have found anywhere. Finally a medieval RPG with a good story. (Sorry, Geralt, but I'm a bit tired of grumpy heroes and prophetic children. Next time I see a prophetic child, either in a video game or in real life, I will kill the bastard myself.) The faces are the most realistic ever, but that could be a bad thing too. (Characters look real but still behave like game characters, so I have the uncanny impression that I'm watching real human beings trapped in a video game world, a Puppet Masters kind of thing. Weird.) The music so far is not perfect but it is good. (This game would like to have Ennio Morricone as composer.) The cut scenes are as good as in a very good movie, not like in a very good game, which is excellent. (Finally!) The gameplay is great, the world, the exploration... I really like this thing.

The Bad

There are some elements that are not convincing. For example, if you rotate Henry his feet rotate as well, which is amateurish stuff, unjustifiable in a game of this quality. (That wasn't the case during the alpha.) There is no zoom. (Not serious but uncomfortable anyway.) There is no way to control your speed with an analog stick. (Bad.) There is also no way to control Henry's height when he tries to pick through windows or holes for example, which would have been useful. (Alien Isolation gives you that option.) And there are bugs. (One in particular left me without a horse for a while, and there are problems with some textures, but not frequently.)

The Ugly

Now comes the part that could ruin the game for me, a design decision that doesn't make any sense: gifts. Yes, the game gives you gifts. (Some are for bakers, so if you are not a baker you may be safe from some of this.) For example, treasure maps and armor that the games gives you for free, for no reason, and without any kind of integration with the fictional world at all. (These guys follow Bethesda in their way to integrate DLCs to the main product. Don't do that!) The most insulting of all (so far) are the nests. I found two of them, but I only looked inside of one. What did I find? Jewelry worth 1000 groschen, the coin in the game. Curious, because I was having trouble trying to get 50 groschen to pay a debt, and then I find freaking jewelry with a cost of 1000 groschen. Great! No more debts, not more worries; I could buy food, potions, a horse, and even hire the services of one of those nice looking girls in a Bath House. Oh, yeah, and no more play. Why to play the game? I can get money for free! I only need to walk around and become a kind of nests collector or something, apparently a very lucrative job on medieval times. Or maybe is me. Maybe it was a common thing for birds to steal jewelry and for people to find it over their walks on those times. So it is one of two things: or the economic system in the game is broken and the designers had to add this kind of thing as a way of balance (so the economic thing is broken for short) or it is not, it actually works perfectly, but now this thing breaks it badly.

The Rant

Why? Why did you did that? The game was so perfect. Why did you have to add this thing that ruins the game experience so badly? Was it because you wanted to make KCD look like a AAA game? You didn't need to do that. This game is better than most AAA games out there. You have the best graphics, acting and narrative the money can buy, and amazing gameplay. Why to borrow the worst techniques from the AAA companies? If you want to steal something don't be this. It just doesn't work. This is a gift for people who actually don't like the game, who prefer not to play it. Why did you make something that will benefit people who don't like your game? What about the people who like it like myself? The people who helped you to make this game possible. Don't worry. I didn't take the jewelry, and I didn't look at the maps or took the gambeson. But those things are still there, and will still be there tomorrow when I sit to play your game, like a ghost presence trying to remind me of this outrageous disgrace.

Conclusion

I will be living in that world for many weeks/months to come. This is a triumph that surpass everything shown during the alpha or the first beta. It has troubles, estrange troubles, but it is delightful. Hope you enjoy as much as I did.

"Playing" is not simply a pastime, it is the primordial basis of imagination and creation. - Hideo Kojima

I haven't found any nests yet (nests?), but otherwise I agree with your review, Etsu.

In particular, "we want to copy AAA game features" absolutely seems like a thing Warhorse did here. The faces really are outstanding -- they frequently look like actual faces, but without being clones of each other. And the cutscenes really are outstanding -- some of the best I've ever seen in a game, not just pretty but effective delivery systems for story. Some of the voice acting is amateurish, and a couple of voice cast choices seem strangely out of place, but some of the voice work really is excellent. There are lots of opportunities for back-and-forth dialogue exchanges, and the writing is frequently quite good.

But....

There are many cutscenes. Some are long. And so, just as I'm trying to enjoy playing the game, Warhorse yanks control away from me to show me what they think I need to see.

A number of dialogue exchanges are forced -- the game cuts into them without warning. In these exchanges, you can't press a button to skip through a character's speech; you have to listen to every single word for as long as it takes. Worst of all, many of your character's responses are on a timer. Yes, Real Conversations are in real-time, but in a game I like having a little time to think which option best suits the way I want to play my character. No, not permitted, choose something instantly or Warhorse will choose for me. Why?

I've already mentioned Warhorse refuses to implement a quicksave/quickload option, as well as the clunkiness of some of the mouse & keyboard controls. This stuff may seem fine to people who only play on an Xbox or PlayStation; in a PC game, it's not fine at all. (Fortunately, people are already publishing helpful mods at the Nexus.)

So, overall, the world of this game looks incredible. I really want to explore it. But for some reason, Warhorse frequently injects AAA game tropes that interfere with my desire to just play the game. It feels pretty similar to The Witcher 2, actually -- not a bad game, but one where the developers just could not keep themselves from leading you by the nose from Epic Encounter to Epic Encounter.

Maybe Warhorse's next game will be as much of an improvement as CDPR made from TW2 to TW3.

A number of dialogue exchanges are forced -- the game cuts into them without warning. In these exchanges, you can't press a button to skip through a character's speech; you have to listen to every single word for as long as it takes. Worst of all, many of your character's responses are on a timer. Yes, Real Conversations are in real-time, but in a game I like having a little time to think which option best suits the way I want to play my character. No, not permitted, choose something instantly or Warhorse will choose for me. Why?

Look at the positive side of it: these points are easily adjusted with a patch, without need to alter neither gameplay nor story. A fix at zero-cost, therefore likely to happen if enough people voice their opinion about it.

Look at the positive side of it: these points are easily adjusted with a patch, without need to alter neither gameplay nor story. A fix at zero-cost, therefore likely to happen if enough people voice their opinion about it.

Given that the game also runs on consoles, the cost of patching is always quite high, since any patch needs to go though a timely and costly submission phase at MS and Sony.
And game companies try not to fracture their userbase by having different versions (features, improvements) of their game on PC and consoles.
Patching the PC version is often trivial, but if the console users constantly see those improvements only to reach the PC platform, they might get grumpled...

And the cutscenes really are outstanding -- some of the best I've ever seen in a game, not just pretty but effective delivery systems for story. Some of the voice acting is amateurish, and a couple of voice cast choices seem strangely out of place, but some of the voice work really is excellent. There are lots of opportunities for back-and-forth dialogue exchanges, and the writing is frequently quite good.

I agree entirely. I like the voice of the main character for example just because it's quite different from what we usually get on videogames.

A number of dialogue exchanges are forced -- the game cuts into them without warning. In these exchanges, you can't press a button to skip through a character's speech; you have to listen to every single word for as long as it takes. Worst of all, many of your character's responses are on a timer.

As far as I know you can skip every dialog. I use a controller and I can skip dialogs with ( B ). Did you tried using the spacebar?

Note: I only skip dialogs if I have already listened them before of course.

"Playing" is not simply a pastime, it is the primordial basis of imagination and creation. - Hideo Kojima

It's in the story-driven dialogues -- the ones in which your responses are on a timer -- that no keyboard or mouse button will skip a line.

And yes, I only skip a line if I've heard it before.

Actually, I have a new complaint now: in the early game there's an unwinnable fight. Warhorse gives you no information that it's unwinnable; and you do want to win it... but there is no way to do so. No amount of skill or effort will suffice -- Warhorse has literally coded the encounter so that no matter how much time you put into it, you lose. But they don't tell you this.

One might be inclined to try to defend this as Warhorse trying to tell a story. But that is exactly my larger gripe with them: they are so bound and determined to make me experience their story in the way they want it experienced that they do things that interfere with simply playing a game.

And this in turn makes KCD another argument for my belief that Story and Interactive Game become increasingly incompatible. If you have an absorbing story you want everyone to experience, great! Write a book.

If instead you want to make a game, in which player choices within a simulated world have interesting consequences, and you trust the player of that game to decide which choices are the most fun, then do that -- and leave the storytelling to the player as far as possible.

I think Warhorse is trying too hard to tell a particular story, and this is inconsistent with player-centric gameplay in a simulated world. They take away control too often; they cheat on difficulty; they interrupt my fun to show me their stuff, and while it's often nice stuff, it's still an interruption of the gameplay I was enjoying.

I'm still playing because the gameplay is excellent. I just wish they'd let me get on with it!

story and Interactive Game become increasingly incompatible. If you have an absorbing story you want everyone to experience, great! Write a book.

If instead you want to make a game, in which player choices within a simulated world have interesting consequences, and you trust the player of that game to decide which choices are the most fun, then do that -- and leave the storytelling to the player as far as possible.

I don't know, I can think of quite a few games that do an excellent job of combining story with a highly interactive, explorable world. Deus Ex, for one, or perhaps Skyrim, or System Shock. Grand Theft Auto does a fair job too, and I would be remiss not to mention Subnautica as well, having played it recently.

I think it can be done, and done well, no matter the level of interactivity of the world. The main thing, I think, is how much you want the story to be "central" to the game. Skyrim and Subnautica, for instance, take a very "hands off" approach when it comes to storytelling - much more so for Subnautica. With Skyrim, there are specific "points" of the game where the main quest is brought to the foreground - and it's wise enough to make absolutely sure you know that this is part of the main quest - you're only there if you're looking for story. Subnautica takes a much more "hands off" approach - the story exists, and while the game may drop hints of places you're supposed to go to continue the story, you're allowed to go about it in any manner you choose, or in (almost) any order, driven entirely by the desire to explore (and it does exceedingly well!).

With Kingdom Come: Deliverance, I think it's just a case of "Warhorse did a bad job of implementing it". Unsurprising, honestly, given that it's their very first game. (On a different note, I don't think they should have priced it quite as high as they did.)

Waved my sword about in a very menacing manner today. It's a worthy addition to my collection.

I haven't played the game though. I've decided it will have to wait until I've built my ultimate modded Skyrim game worthy of the expense of the new graphics card. I'm happy I don't have to deal with the problems of SLI anymore.

Waved my sword about in a very menacing manner today. It's a worthy addition to my collection.

I haven't played the game though. I've decided it will have to wait until I've built my ultimate modded Skyrim game worthy of the expense of the new graphics card. I'm happy I don't have to deal with the problems of SLI anymore.

That's fine, by then more patches should remove the edges from the game.